Fake Japanese Language Speech Contest

Fighting against discrimination and in favor of human rights does not necessarily mean you’re a “self absorbed baby boomer”. In that case, all the other anti-discrimination organizations in the world should be put in the same basket.
In that case, you and LB just prove what your hidden motivations are: an anti-progressive ultra-conservative agenda.

delusional much? You might live here but you are just a cute panda to the Japanese. You hate Debito because he threatens your fantasy of fitting in. You can’t deal with the reality that you are not accepted in any way. I have met hundreds of guys like you in the 20 years I have been here, who in a group go on and on about how they love Japan and how the Japanese love them. But when you get them alone and they are not trying to impress anyone they admit to being friendless in this wonderful country.

That is not true. If you believe we are all equal, then you should at least contest any form of discrminatory attitude (anti-asian stereotypes in US as well as anti-foreign stereotypes in Japan). Also, some serious issues are also evoked by Debito, for example the infamous JITCO trainee program:

Six young Chinese women arrived in this historic city three summers ago, among the tens of thousands of apprentices brought to Japan each year on the promise of job training, good pay and a chance at a better life back home.

Instead, the women say, they were subjected to 16-hour workdays assembling cellphones at below the minimum wage, with little training of any sort, all under the auspices of a government-approved “foreign trainee” program that critics call industrial Japan’s dirty secret.

“My head hurt, my throat stung,” said Zhang Yuwei, 23, who operated a machine that printed cellphone keypads, battling fumes that she said made the air so noxious that managers would tell Japanese employees to avoid her work area.

Ms. Zhang says she was let go last month after her employer found that she and five compatriots had complained to a social worker about their work conditions. A Japanese lawyer is now helping the group sue their former employer, seeking back pay and damages totaling $207,000.

Critics say foreign trainees have become an exploited source of cheap labor in a country with one of the world’s most rapidly aging populations and lowest birthrates. All but closed to immigration, Japan faces an acute labor shortage, especially for jobs at the country’s hardscrabble farms or small family-run factories.

“The mistreatment of trainees appears to be widespread,” said Shoichi Ibusuki, a human rights lawyer based in Tokyo.

From across Asia, about 190,000 trainees — migrant workers in their late teens to early 30s — now toil in factories and farms in Japan. They have been brought to the country, in theory, to learn technical expertise under an international aid program started by the Japanese government in the 1990s.

For businesses, the government-sponsored trainee program has offered a loophole to hiring foreign workers. But with little legal protection, the indentured work force is exposed to substandard, sometimes even deadly, working conditions, critics say.

Government records show that at least 127 of the trainees have died since 2005 — or one of about every 2,600 trainees, which experts say is a high death rate for young people who must pass stringent physicals to enter the program. Many deaths involved strokes or heart failure that worker rights groups attribute to the strain of excessive labor.

The Justice Ministry found more than 400 cases of mistreatment of trainees at companies across Japan in 2009, including failing to pay legal wages and exposing trainees to dangerous work conditions. This month, labor inspectors in central Japan ruled that a 31-year-old Chinese trainee, Jiang Xiaodong, had died from heart failure induced by overwork.

Under pressure by human rights groups and a string of court cases, the government has begun to address some of the program’s worst abuses. The United Nations has urged Japan to scrap it altogether.

After one year of training, during which the migrant workers receive subsistence pay below the minimum wage, trainees are allowed to work for two more years in their area of expertise at legal wage levels. But interviews with labor experts and a dozen trainees indicate that the foreign workers seldom achieve those pay rates.

On paper, the promised pay still sounds alluring to the migrant workers. Many are from rural China, where per-capita disposable income can be as low as $750 a year. To secure a spot in the program, would-be trainees pay many times that amount in fees and deposits to local brokers, sometimes putting up their homes as collateral — which can be confiscated if trainees quit early or cause trouble.

The Japan International Training Cooperation Organization, or Jitco, which operates the program, said it was aware some companies had abused the system and that it was taking steps to crack down on the worst cases. The organization plans to ensure that “trainees receive legal protection, and that cases of fraud are eliminated,” Jitco said in a written response to questions.

Ms. Zhang says she paid $8,860 to a broker in her native Hebei Province for a spot in the program. She was assigned to a workshop run by Modex-Alpha, which assembles cellphones sold by Sharp and other electronics makers. Ms. Zhang said her employer demanded her passport and housed her in a cramped apartment with no heat, alongside five other trainees.

In her first year, Ms. Zhang worked eight-hour days and received $660 a month after various deductions, according to her court filing — about $3.77 an hour, or less than half the minimum wage level in Hiroshima. Moreover, all but $170 a month was forcibly withheld by the company as savings, and paid out only after Ms. Zhang pushed the company for the full amount, she said.

In her second year, her monthly wage rose to about $1,510 — or $7.91 an hour, according to her filing. That was still lower than the $8.56 minimum wage for the electronics industry in Hiroshima. And her employers withheld all but $836 a month for her accommodations and other expenses, according to her filing.

And as her wages went up, so did her hours, she said, to as many as 16 a day, five to six days a week. Modex-Alpha declined to comment on Ms. Zhang’s account, citing her lawsuit against the company.

As part of the government’s effort to clean up the program, beginning July 1, minimum wage and other labor protections have for the first time been applied to first-year workers. The government has also banned the confiscating of trainees’ passports.

But experts say it will be hard to change the program’s culture.

Economic strains are also a factor. Although big companies like Toyota and Mazda have moved much of their manufacturing to China to take advantage of low wages there, smaller businesses have found that impossible — and yet are still pressured to drive down costs.

“If these businesses hired Japanese workers, they would have to pay,” said Kimihiro Komatsu, a labor consultant in Hiroshima. “But trainees work for a bare minimum,” he said. “Japan can’t afford to stop.”

For almost three years, Catherine Lopez, 28, a trainee from Cebu, the Philippines, has worked up to 14 hours a day, sometimes six days a week, welding parts at a supplier for the Japanese carmaker Mazda. She receives as little as $1,574 a month, or $7.91 an hour — below the $8.83 minimum wage for auto workers in Hiroshima.

Ms. Lopez says Japanese managers at the supplier, Kajiyama Tekko, routinely hurl verbal abuses at her cohort of six trainees, telling them to follow orders or “swim back to the Philippines.”

“We came to Japan because we want to learn advanced technology,” Ms. Lopez said.

Yukari Takise, a manager at Kajiyama Tekko, denied the claims. “If they don’t like it here,” she said, “they can go home.”

But after inquiries by a reporter for The New York Times, a company that organizes the trainee program in Hiroshima, Ateta Japan, said it had advised Kajiyama Tekko to recalculate the wages it pays foreign trainees and ordered it to grant the vacation days owed to the trainees.

“They may have pushed the trainees too hard,” said Hideki Matsunishi, Ateta’s president. “But you must also feel sympathy for the companies, who are all struggling in this economy.”
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Wow Jack, bitter much?

“Your are just a cute panda to the Japanese”

This is what I am talking about, folks who complain about how “the Japanese” lump all foreigners into a group and then do the exact same thing themselves.

“You hate Debito because he threatens your fantasy of fitting in.”

No, but first of all allow me to say with absolute certainty that I do by and large “fit in” amongst my Japanese co-workers, friends and family. I might not be seen as “fitting in” by some anonymous oba-chans at the supermarket, but then again who cares what strangers on the street think? Do you? If you are back in your native country walking down the street, do you give a rats ass about what some old lady on the same aisle as you in the store thinks about you? Now Debito, sure, he’ll never “fit in”, because he insists into getting into dick-wagging contests with the locals at every opportunity.

No, if I dislike Debito it is not because he claims “NJ” will never fit in. I dislike Debito because he insists on trying to make the Japanese fit into his über-liberal wet-dream where visas are not needed, everyone can vote regardless of where they are from, you aren’t ever allowed to say anything bad because it is “hate speech” (and the “victims” get to determine subjectively what “hate speech” is) and any of a whole raft of half-baked ideas he holds.

”That is not true. If you believe we are all equal, then you should at least contest any form of discrminatory attitude (anti-asian stereotypes in US as well as anti-foreign stereotypes in Japan). ”

I agree.
The point is you can’t fight against racism while being in the hate group.
(whether mr James is or is not racism is debatable though)

“Also, some serious issues are also evoked by Debito, for example the infamous JITCO trainee program”:

Do you read Japanese newspaper and books?
The problems of sweatshops in Japan are evoked by Japanese right activists long before Debito catches them.

Piglet さん、　Do you read and write Japanese?
あなた日本語の読み書きできますか？

先進国において移民の搾取については各国の人権活動家が指摘していますが、ご指摘のような人権問題は日本にもあるわけです。

なるほど、彼のブログでもそうした問題を取り上げてはいます。しかし、それは一知半解の法律知識やあやふやな事実関係に基づいたものでしかなく、多くの日本人、および、常識ある外国人のコメントを排除しながらする活動は限界があるどころか、自国のことをも日本語も知らない外国人の若者にとっては有害でさえあります。
　それは、白人至上主義者の団体が”黒人”の問題点やイスラム圏の問題点を一知半解な知識で羅列する行為と限りなく接近しています。

We’re not talking here about the “whorehouses”. You’re missing the point. The point is: we are progressively entering in a post-national, post-racial world. Although the situation in Japan improved considerably within the last 10 years, I believe there is still a widespread anti-chinese racism (I witnessed it first hand several times). So, yes, I encourage any initiative aiming at bringing people together and educating the xenophobic leaders and people in Japan and everywhere in the world. This mindset is not actively fought against in Japan (even though the racists are a minority), because many people still conflate citizenship and ethnicity.
In my native country, France, there is also widespread racism (mainly targeting people from arabic ancestry, but not only). I appreciate the fact that there is strong anti-racism activity in France (advocacy groups, education in school for cross-cultural tolerance), but there is still a lot to do, as we can see with the terrible laws our government took recently.
I don’t feel being unjust with Japan. I don’t believe in the “exceptional” status of any country. As a part of international community, is is OUR duty to fight against discriminations and for a better world, in Japan, France, US, China, etc…

Piglet and other Debito followers.

Why don’t you guys set up another site welcoming Japanese perspectives rather than rejecting them to talk about the problems the expats are facing in Japan as I have been suggesting?

Who do you think believe in your talk as long as you guys keep rejecting the suggestion, bitching about Japan and Japanese, afraid of discussing outside your forum, fueling hatred, satisfied with lies, hyperboles about Japan and Japanese, banning the comments revealing the truth ?

“We’re not talking here about the “whorehouses”. You’re missing the point. The point is: we are progressively entering in a post-national, post-racial world. Although the situation in Japan improved considerably within the last 10 years, I believe there is still a widespread anti-chinese racism (I witnessed it first hand several times). So, yes, I encourage any initiative aiming at bringing people together and educating the xenophobic leaders and people in Japan and everywhere in the world.”

THE JAPANESE ARE AN IGNORANT PEOPLE AND I MUST SHOW THEM THE ERRORS OF THEIR WAYS BY BEING CONDESCENDING AND SELF RIGHTEOUS.

All this talk about a post-nationalist world is high and mighty, but I sure don’t see it happening outside of Europe yet.

“This mindset is not actively fought against in Japan (even though the racists are a minority), because many people still conflate citizenship and ethnicity.
In my native country, France, there is also widespread racism (mainly targeting people from arabic ancestry, but not only). I appreciate the fact that there is strong anti-racism activity in France (advocacy groups, education in school for cross-cultural tolerance), but there is still a lot to do, as we can see with the terrible laws our government took recently.”

Do you want Japan to end up like your native France with ethnic ghettos and a violent minority that absolutely refuses to accept French values and assimilate?

“I don’t feel being unjust with Japan. I don’t believe in the “exceptional” status of any country. As a part of international community, is is OUR duty to fight against discriminations and for a better world, in Japan, France, US, China, etc…”

China being in that list is pretty LOL, considering how they treat the Uighers, Mongolians, and Tibetans.

“Which laws are those? Do you mean the laws such as the one that banned Burkas in order to stop the subjugation of women and make them integrate with French society? Surely you do not consider such a law to be “terrible” – or do you advocate allowing immigrants to just do whatever they want, no matter how distasteful or antisocial the rest of society views it, because “it’s their culture, after all…””

Piglet is probably referring to the headscarf ban; something if I was French I would support 100%.